Appliance timers are commonly used in many household appliances, such as clothes dryers, dishwashers, and clothes washers. The appliance timer controls operations of the appliance by actuating and deactuating switches which start and stop various work operations within the appliance such as a heated tumble operation in the case of a clothes dryer. The switches within the appliance timer are actuated and deactuated by interaction of a cam surface defined in a cam of the appliance timer and a cam follower which is associated with a particular switch.
Appliance timers typically have an audible tone generating device associated therewith. Such a device is actuated at predetermined points in time during an appliance cycle in order to alert an operator that the appliance is nearing or at the end of the cycle. Certain appliance timers which have heretofore been designed include an electric buzzer which generates a buzzing tone when actuated by the timer. For example, in the case of a clothes dryer, the buzzer is selectively actuated by the appliance timer to alert the operator that the drying cycle is nearing completion thereby alerting the operator to remove his or her clothes from the dryer in order to prevent wrinkling or the like.
In addition, it may be desirable to equip certain appliance models, such as "high-end" models, with a tone generating device which emits a more pleasant audible tone relative to electric buzzers which have heretofore been designed. For example, a number of appliance timers which have heretofore been designed include a bell chime assembly which is selectively chimed by the appliance timer at predetermined points in time during an appliance cycle.
However, use of appliance timers which include a bell chime assembly have a number of drawbacks associated therewith. For example, it is desirable to provide an appliance timer which may be manually set by the operator in a quiet manner. In particular, it is desirable to provide an appliance timer in which the bell is not chimed during a period of time in which the operator manually sets the appliance timer.
Hence, what is needed is an appliance timer which overcomes one or more of the above-mentioned drawbacks. What is further needed is an appliance timer which has an apparatus for permitting quiet manual setting of the appliance timer.